アイルランド母子施設で子ども９０００人死亡、国が公式謝罪

【ダブリンＡＦＰ＝時事】アイルランドで国や教会が1998年まで運営していた母子生活支援施設で、子ども約9000人が死亡していたことが、12日に発表された政府の公式調査報告書で明らかになり、ミホル・マーティン首相は翌13日、国として公式に謝罪した。（写真は資料写真）
　マーティン首相は同日下院で、「（同施設に）行かざるを得なかったわが国の母親や子どもたちの身に降りかかった当時の世代の過ちを謝罪する」と述べた。
　歴史的にカトリック教徒が多いアイルランドの「母子の家」は、配偶者がおらず、パートナーや家族からの支援も得られず、社会から厳しい非難にさらされた妊婦らを受け入れる施設だった。
　政府の母子の家調査委員会（ＣＩＭＢＨ）は、施設が運営されていた７６年間について調査を実施。その結果、施設にいた子どもの１５％に当たる約９０００人が死亡していたことが分かり、その数は「不穏」というべきレベルだったと指摘した。
　施設内で生まれた子どもの多くが、母親から引き離されて養子に出され、血縁関係を完全に断たれていた。
　ＣＩＭＢＨは報告書の中で、単独の死因は挙げていないものの、「特定可能だった主な死因は呼吸器感染症と胃腸炎だった」としている。また１９３４～７３年に、施設の子どもたちを対象にした非倫理的なワクチン実験が計７件あったことにも言及した。
　マーティン首相は１２日、同報告書について「わが国での数十年間に及ぶ根深い女性憎悪の風土に風穴を開ける」ものだとする見方を示し、「わが国には過去に、セクシュアリティーや肉体関係について完全にゆがんだ姿勢があり、その機能不全の恐ろしい代償を払わされたのが若い母親やその子どもたちだった」と話していた。【翻訳編集ＡＦＰＢＢＮｅｗｓ】
〔ＡＦＰ＝時事〕（2021/01/14-12:41）

Some 9,000 children died in Ireland's mother and baby homes, where unmarried mothers were routinely separated from their infant offspring, according to an official report published Tuesday.
Ireland's Commission of Investigation into Mother and Baby Homes (CIMBH) found disquieting levels of infant mortality at the institutions, which operated in the historically Catholic nation as recently as 1998.
Studying such homes over a 76-year period through 1998, the CIMBH determined that 9,000 children died in them, or 15 percent of those who passed through.
The homes -- run by religious orders and the Irish state -- housed unmarried women who became pregnant, were unsupported by partners and family and faced severe social stigma.
Children born in the institutions would often be separated from their mothers and put up for adoption, severing all family ties.
Prime minister Micheal Martin said the CIMBH report opens a window onto a deeply misogynistic culture in Ireland over several decades.
We had a completely warped attitude to sexuality and intimacy, and young mothers and their sons and daughters were forced to pay a terrible price for that dysfunction, he added.
Martin -- who will make an official state apology on the matter in Irish parliament on Wednesday -- said the high infant mortality was one of the most deeply distressing findings of the report.
One harsh truth in all of this is that all of society was complicit in it, Martin said.
We are going to need to confront and come to terms with this as a people.
- 'Forced adoption' -
The CIMBH was established in 2015, after an amateur historian uncovered evidence of a potential mass grave of infants at one such home in the west Ireland town of Tuam.
But survivors' group Irish First Mothers said the report fails to find that mothers were coerced into giving up their children, which it said was the most grievous injury inflicted by homes.
The group said the report absolved both the Church and state of any systemic responsibility for what it admits is the effective incarceration of pregnant mothers.
The CIMBH report says 56,000 unmarried mothers and 57,000 children passed through the homes examined.
By the 1960s most women placed their child for adoption and left a mother and baby home within a few months of giving birth, it said.
It said some of this cohort of women are of the opinion that their consent was not full, free and informed. However, it added, with the exception of a small number of legal cases, there is no evidence that this was their view at the time of the adoption.
Many of the women received little or no ante-natal care.
The report gave no single explanation for the deaths, but said the major identifiable causes... were respiratory infections and gastroenteritis.
It also highlighted a total of seven unethical vaccine trials on children in the institutions between 1934 and 1973.
Meanwhile women of the period who gave birth outside marriage were subject to particularly harsh treatment at the hands of families and partners, backed by both Church and state.
Women entered the homes mostly because they had no alternative and many suffered emotional abuse, it said.
The atmosphere appears to have been cold and seemingly uncaring, the study said.